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Photo: John GraneFor many years, Sylvia Matlock and Ross Johnson lived in an old 384-square-foot log cabin on Vashon Island—a 20- minute ferry ride west from Seattle–while they concentrated all their energies on their nearby nursery, DIG Floral and Garden. During that time, with a renovation in mind, they collected carved wooden doors, salvage materials, lots of pots and hundreds of plants. A couple of years ago they finally gutted the dark cabin in a quest for more light and a greater connection between indoors and out.

For this pair of plant savants, a house is just an accessory to the garden, so they only added 430 square feet to the original cabin, with help from Vashon architect Christopher Ezzell and designer Robert Rosenbaum. Today, their newly zinc-clad house sits at the heart of the two-acre waterfront property, its metal-and-glass exterior surprisingly at home in a woodland of firs and madrones.

With double the space, the couple gained a luminous conservatory/ dining room, ample for entertaining and overwintering tender plants, as well as a glossy new kitchen (with black soapstone counters and stainless steel appliances) and a shiny new bathroom. Oversized doors and windows open wide for a feeling of living in the midst of the garden, even when stuck indoors during one of the Northwest's notoriously gloomy days. "Their goal was to transform a very small and ordinary house into a very small and wonderful work of art!" says designer/engineer Rosenbaum.

As with everything this couple pursues at home and at work, the entry to their property was a creative collaboration. You approach the house by stepping onto a slab of perforated cast iron before passing through a V-shaped portal clad in corrugated zinc. "Ross put to use the elements he had at hand," says Matlock of the salvaged slab and the commercial steel door, which create a vivid sense of entry. It was Matlock who picked the brilliant chartreuse paint for the glass-paned metal door. Along the graveled entry, Johnson built low stone walls that snake a sinuous line through the garden to retain levels and define spaces. Matlock garnished the fence with a tapestry of vines, planting hydrangeas and huge sprays of leafy ornamental rhubarb along the rockery.

When you step through the chartreuse door, you'll find an explosion of dramatic foliage textures with rarely a flower to be seen. The sheer verdancy and variety of leaf shape and color is astonishing. A shady canopy of majestic conifers shelters the garden, the rough trunks creating a foreground to the vast view of salt water and mountains. Gravel paths and stone stairs wind through and around the half-acre garden lending this quintessentially Northwest site the intimate charm of a Japanese stroll garden.

An exciting array of unusual plants nestle up against the paths and tumble out of the owners' large collection of pots. Matlock explains, "I like plants that are big and peculiar," understating the exotic lushness of the cacti, euphorbias and agaves that flourish here, warmed by the proximity of Puget Sound.

Photo: John Granen

Sylvia Matlock's advice for successful living in 750 square feet? "Enjoy each others' company." Savvy design helps too. The house's soaring ceilings and oversized windows and doors lend a sense of airy volume despite the small footprint. Even when the doors and windows are closed, the house is drenched in light, a pleasant change from the old cabin. The doors fold wide open and effectively disappear, blurring the boundaries between indoors and out for a sense of spaciousness, air and light. Yet when cold winds blow in off Puget Sound, the little house feels cozy and snug, with its patterned fabrics, wooden interior doors and wood-burning stove.

Space-saving strategies abound, among them is the Rais fireplace tucked into a corner of the living room. It can be used for cooking and has room beneath for storing logs. Glossy Brazilian basalt flooring runs through all the rooms, creating an illusion of expansive floor space. A black leather loveseat by Le Corbusier is sized for two, and built-in window seats provide efficient seating in the conservatory. But not all the furnishings are diminutive; it's just that the bold, dramatic notes don't take up floor space. The curvaceous light fixtures by Resolute and Anta are surprisingly large, and two pairs of antique wooden doors are commanding.

The limited space, no larger than the living/dining room area in many homes, works not only because Johnson and Matlock enjoy each other's company, but because every detail was meticulously planned. Despite such attention to detail, there's been room left for happy serendipity, as when chipmunks pop up and down through the grid in the salvaged concrete porches, a use never considered during the porch's previous incarnation as shipyard welding tables.

Photo: John Granen

What the Pros Know
A satisfying year-round garden depends on foliage. Whether planting in pots or in the ground, Matlock emphasizes texture and contrast rather than flower or color. She creates leafy drama by using oversized architectural plants to play with the scale of the garden. She looks for sharp, spiky, fluffy, wavy, variegated and shiny-leafed plants, then mixes them fearlessly, green on green, silver on silver, for tone-on-tone effects. Her favorite foliage plants for garden theatrics include canna lilies, yuccas, mahonias, euphorbias, sedum, Melianthus major and Begonia grandis. In Vashon Island's Zone 8 climate, most of these plants are hardy, although Matlock overwinters tender perennials and annuals like echeveria, aoenium and some euphorbias in her conservatory. At last count, she has 177 pots, planted one kind of plant per pot for maximum foliar impact. And she often places additional unplanted pots in the garden for their strong sculptural presence and to emphasize the foliage around them.

Photo: John Granen

Matlock and Johnson have worked tirelessly for 15 years to create their half-acre garden in less than ideal conditions. The soil is dry and drains all too quickly because the house and garden are built on old glacial till. Such conditions would suggest Mediterranean plants. However, the couple conserved a handsome canopy of native trees that cast too much shade to grow rosemary and lavender. But they persevered, layering the garden with infrastructure and plants, many one-of-a-kind experiments brought home from their nursery. "We've even carted lots of plants home from DIG that have imperfections" says Matlock, pointing out a little grove of birches with twisty trunks. "I'm such a plant nerd," admits Matlock of her foraging trips to California to track down the newest, the latest, the most desirable plants.

While Matlock plants, Johnson builds. He created the ultimate uber-containers by having 3,000-pound concrete catch basins (usually used as sewers) stacked to retain the slope below the little house. Now vines cascade down the concrete surface and trees grow happily within the huge cisterns.

Years ago the couple designed a larger house with a garage out front. As they approached its construction they had an epiphany. "Why did we need all that space?" says Matlock. Realizing they couldn't picture how a bigger house might look on their property and that they didn't want to give up garden space for it, they downsized their plans. Today, they're entirely happy with the result: a light-filled, little contemporary house that's an integral part of their gorgeous garden.